Though its remote location in southern Tanzania means few westerners have a chance to visit, the Selous Game Reserve is not only the largest protected area in Tanzania, it’s the largest on the entire continent of Africa!

The massive size of the reserve—it spans nearly 50,000 square kilometers—means that it contains a huge variety of both ecosystems and wildlife. Riverine forests, swamplands, rocky hills, grasslands and lowland rainforests contain stable populations of dozens of species, including some extremely endangered animals, like the black rhinoceros.

But how did it get the name “Selous?” Is that Swahili for something? A word for the region in the language of a tribe that has lived there for centuries? Just something that sounded nice?

No, it’s the name of one of Africa’s most famous explorers, Frederick Selous. A Victorian who helped chart the region, expand the world’s zoological knowledge, and champion conservation, his legacy in East Africa continues to this day.

Born in 1851, Selous was inspired as a child by stories of the adventures of David Livingstone and his companions. Even at 10 years old, he knew what he wanted to be; caught once sleeping on the floor of his boarding school dormitory, with no cover but a thin nightshirt, Selous explained himself: “Well, you see, one day I am going to be a hunter in Africa and I am just hardening myself to sleep on the ground.”

At the age of 19 he set off for South Africa, where he began his years-long explorations of the continent. An affable man, Selous quickly ingratiated himself with tribal leaders wherever he traveled, regularly receiving permission to hunt on their lands.

And much of what he did in Africa was hunt; explorers and naturalists of the time were almost exclusively big game hunters, and Selous was no exception. But there was an upside; Selous was able to donate over 500 mammal specimens to the Natural History Museum of London, including examples of several previously unknown species. He also donated thousands of plant specimens to the museum from his travels on three continents.

Athletic and generally abstemious, he embodied the Victorian ideal of manhood, excelling at sports, riding, and warfare. His almost superhuman romantic qualities, in fact, led to many portrayals in literature (not to mention thousands of eager readers for his many books about his journeys).

Even decades after his death (in 1917) Selous occasionally pops up; Selous appeared twice in the 1990s TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, as well as in a TV mini-series about his real-life friend and compatriot Cecil Rhodes (titled Rhodes).

After Selous’s death in battle (though he was 66 at the time, he fought the Germans in the colonial skirmishes of World War I), his friend Theodore Roosevelt, former president of the United States, said:

He led a singularly adventurous and fascinating life, with just the right alternations between the wilderness and civilization. He helped spread the borders of his people’s land. He added much to the sum of human knowledge and interest. He closed his life exactly as such a life ought to be closed, by dying in battle for his country while rendering her valiant and effective service. Who could wish a better life or a better death, or desire to leave a more honourable heritage to his family and his nation?

Serving as the namesake for Tanzania’s largest and most diverse nature preserve seems a fitting memorial to such a life, one lived in—and for—the wild.

They came from Germany, England, and Portugal; some were staggeringly wealthy heirs, while others were poor as church mice (and traveling on scant church funds); they blazed a path across the continent in their youth, or only ever managed to make inroads in old age. The backgrounds of Tanzania’s earliest western explorers were diverse, except for one important factor:

They were all men.

That is, until May French Sheldon came along in 1891. Not only did Sheldon set out on her own for East Africa that year—unheard of in a time when “respectable” women still might not visit a gentleman without an escort, let alone a different continent—she managed to uncover parts of the region no one had ever seen before!

Sheldon, an American known for her flamboyant dress and sharp intelligence, was living in London in the early 1890s, where she and her husband had established publishing firms. Interested in the world around her (and far from her), the 41-year-old Sheldon conceived of a solo journey to East Africa in 1891, “simply to study the native habits and customs free from the influence of civilization.”

There was pushback, of course. Sheldon was criticized in the Spectator for indulging her “merely feminine curiosity . . . hardly a useful and laudable one,” and as she was departing from Charing Cross Station, a random bystander yelled at her to “be reasonable, and abandon this mad, useless scheme.”

But Sheldon wouldn’t be dissuaded, and set off for the wilds of East Africa.

And wild it was. In her memoir of the trip, Sheldon mentioned stumbling over “uncertain surfaces [which]…required cat-like agility to crawl or slide down,” at the bottom of which she’d often find herself “landing in a bed of leaves which must have been the accumulation of centuries.” More than once, her guides had to physically haul her out of pools of muck and unexpected pits, and she was undoubtedly uncomfortable during much of her journey.

But what a journey it was!

During her stay, Sheldon met with the Sultan of Zanzibar, who bonded with her over the fact that they were both childless (and refused to believe her husband wasn’t hiding more fertile wives elsewhere). She visited the Maasai people and delighted the chief by cutting up an orange peel so it looked like a set of fright teeth (he responded horrifyingly: by extracting one of his own teeth and, bleeding heavily from the mouth, offering it to Sheldon…and he’d already bored a hole through it so she could more easily wear it around her neck).

Most impressively of all, she was the first Westerner to visit Lake Chala, a body of water that formed in a crater near Kilimanjaro, and was, until her visit, unknown.

Upon her return, and publication of her travelogues, Sheldon was reviled in the press, who saw her as contributing to the “spirit of unrest and the uneasy jealousy that is forever driving the fair sex into proving itself the equal of the other.”

That judgment seems outdated to us now, but in a lot of ways, it didn’t go far enough: May French Sheldon didn’t just prove herself a man’s equal; as an explorer, she far surpassed most men!

National anthems are the standard bearer of patriotism. They’re meant to bind the citizens together, to proclaim that—forget what anyone else might tell you—this country, and only this country, is the best country on earth (often, according to the lyrics, it’s even been given divine approval).

It’s funny, then, how multinational so many anthems are. Britain’s “God Save the Queen” has long been sung by Britons (and citizens of its many former colonies), but several other countries have lifted the tune for their own national anthems. Norway and Liechtenstein still use the melody for their anthems, and Americans singing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” the de facto national anthem until 1931 (when “The Star-Spangled Banner,” complete with a tune cribbed from an English drinking song, was officially chosen to replace it), are likewise pinning their patriotism to England’s.

The national anthems of Africa are no different. Tanzanians everywhere rise and sing to “Mungu ibariki Afrika,” (Swahili for “God Bless Africa”), but the song isn’t originally—or exclusively—their own.

Composed in 1897, “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” (“Lord Bless Africa” in Xhosa) was originally intended as a hymn. Its composer, Enoch Mankayi Sontonga, was working at a Methodist missionary school in South Africa (his homeland) at the time, and he penned the first verse and chorus thinking he was creating a school anthem.

The original lyrics reflect the religious origin:

Lord, bless Africa
May her horn rise high up
Hear Thou our prayers
And bless us

CHORUS:Descend, O Spirit
Descend, O Holy Spirit

At the time of Sontonga’s death, in 1905, the song hadn’t reached much further than his schoolroom. But in 1925, the African National Congress adopted the song as its official closing anthem. In 1927, Samuel Mqhayi, a Xhosa poet, wrote an additional seven verses, and the tune quickly spread across the continent.

In 1961, Tanzania was ready to declare its peaceful independence from Britain. What better song for this nascent African nation than “God Bless Africa?”

It’s not known who wrote the adapted Tanzanian lyrics, but in 1961, “Mungu ibariki Afrika” replaced “God Save the Queen” as the nation’s national anthem, with the following lyrics (translated from the Swahili):

God, bless Africa
Bless its leaders
Widsom, unity, and peace
These are our shields
Africa and its people

CHORUS:Bless Africa, Bless Africa
Bless us, the children of Africa

Interestingly enough, it isn’t until the second verse (which begins “God, bless Tanzania”) that the song even references Tanzania by name!

Of course as we’ve already seen, national anthems don’t stay (uni-)national for long; since Tanzania adopted it, slightly-altered versions of “God, Bless Africa” have served as the national anthems of Zimbabwe and Namibia (both countries have since chosen different anthems), as well as Zambia and South Africa (where the anthem is still in use).

Though the lyrics may change country to country, the spirit—and the music—stays the same. Turns out Sontonga’s song really has brought the entire continent of Africa together!

If you asked most westerners where the big discoveries in Science have happened over the last 50 years, they’d probably point to Switzerland’s large hadron collider, a NASA facility pushing the frontiers of space exploration, or research universities like Stanford and MIT. But one of the most puzzling—and until recently, unexplained—scientific phenomena of recent years was discovered in a very humble setting: a middle school classroom in Tanzania.

In 1963, Erasto Mpemba was just 13 years old, and was a student at the Magamba Secondary School in eastern Tanzania. Making ice cream in class, he noticed that the recipes that were hot seemed to freeze faster than those that were cold. Excited, he told his physics teacher what he’d observed…

…and was promptly laughed out of the room. Not only did the teacher not believe Erasto, he taunted him, saying it wasn’t real physics, but “Mpemba physics.”

Little did he know then that Mpemba physics was very much real.

A few years later, Erasto had moved on to the Mkwawa High School in Iringa. Dr. Denis G. Osbourne visited the school from the University College in Dar es Salaam in order to give a lecture on physics. After the lecture, Erasto went up to Dr. Osbourne and asked him about the strange effect he’d observed, hoping the scientist could explain the phenomenon he’d observed (and was still being laughed at for believing). The doctor had no explanation, but agreed to test the results with Mpemba. He was fascinated to find that Mpemba was right; heated water froze faster than an equal volume of chilled water. They published the results of their study together in 1969, lending Mpemba’s name to the strange effect they were observing.

Mpemba moved on to study wildlife management, eventually attaining the position of Principal Game Officer for the Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, but his discovery remained a mystery. Yes, heated liquids seemed to freeze faster, but why? Did frost on the chilled water somehow “barricade” the liquid inside from freezing? Was evaporation sufficiently reducing the volume of the heated water to allow it to freeze faster? Or was something else entirely going on?

Recently, scientists based out of Singapore think they’ve found the answer, one that depends on the relative elasticity of the hydrogen bonds that form between nearby molecules vs. that of the covalent bonds that hold the oxygen and hydrogen atoms within a single water molecule together.

It was an important answer to a puzzling question; after all, the Mpemba effect seems to fly in the face of long-accepted science, specifically Newton’s Law of Cooling.

Fortunately for science, one Tanzanian student wouldn’t let ridicule, or accepted tenets, keep him from questioning the world around him. Thanks to Erasto Mpemba and his eponymous effect, we understand a little bit more about the world than we did before!

When someone’s considered a master strategist, capable of seeing ten steps ahead and planning accordingly now, we often refer to him or her as a “chess master,” regardless of whether or not s/he’s interested in the actual game of chess.

In Tanzania, such a cunning strategist would be called a bao bingwa (Swahili for “master”) or even a bao fundi (“artist”), after the traditional East African board game, bao.

Anyone who has played any of the many variations of mancala will find the bao board game familiar…at least at first. Boards feature four rows with eight shimo, or pits, each; two players (seated on opposite sides of the board) each control the two rows nearest him or her. Players have 32 kete (the word for “shells,” though usually these markers are made from seeds), which s/he distributes on the board according to the rules of the game variation being played.

Players pick up the contents of a shimo and sow the kete one by one into the adjoining pits, picking up the contents of the final shimo in a “relay sow” when appropriate. The game ends when one player either has no kete in any of the inner-row mashimo (plural of shimo), or when no legal moves remain to him or her (in either instance, that player has just lost).

Playing a round of Bao at the Nyumba campPhoto: Thomson Safaris guest, Jennifer Terry

But don’t be fooled into thinking the game is simple: specialized shimo, known as the nyumba (Swahili for “home”), have special rules applied to them; different results from a sow trigger different stages in the game; and—much as in chess—a single move can have significant repercussions for many turns to come.

In Tanzania, there are two widely-known variations of bao, bao la Kiswahili (bao of the Swahili people) and bao la kujifunza (beginner’s bao). The rules vary slightly (unsurprisingly, bao la kujifunza is slightly less complicated), but both are very popular. In fact, both mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar have bao societies, many of them decades old.

So next time you have the chance to sit down with a bao bingwa, ask him or her to teach you the basics of bao. Like so many of the best games, you’ll learn the rules in just a few minutes…but it may take you a lifetime to become a master!

There’s no “best” way to remember a trip to Tanzania, but there is a sparkliest: tanzanite, a beautiful blue-violet gemstone named after the country where it was first discovered in 1967.

That’s pretty recent as far as gemstones go; classics like diamonds, pearls, and rubies have been studding the foreheads of royalty for centuries, after all. That likely has a lot to do with the way in which tanzanite was discovered. Emmanuel Merishiek Mollel, a Maasai tribesman living near Arusha (where he worked as a tailor), reportedly came across the remains of a lightning fire. Nestled in the charred earth were sparkling blue stones he’d never seen before. At first, he thought the stone must be peridot, but soon realized it couldn’t be.

After consulting with a gemologist based in Nairobi, Kenya, who consulted with scientists in the United States as well as the Gemological Institute of America, they finally determined that this was a new gem entirely, which formed when a known mineral, zoisite (an opaque, orangey-brown material), was exposed to high heat.

Naturally-formed tanzanite is still found only in the Manyara region of Tanzania, meaning that high-quality stones from the region can fetch as much as $1000/carat. Unlike some stones, however, tanzanite can be “made to order,” at least to some degree.

Heating zoisite, either naturally (through lightning or forest fires) or in a furnace, causes it to change from orange to a crystalline blue and violet stone (if you hold a piece of tanzanite under different types of light, different colors become more prominent; fluorescent light brings out the blue, whereas incandescent light makes the violet more prominent). The way the stone is cut can also affect the dominant hue. Stones cut on a shorter axis will appear bluer, but this results in more waste during the cutting process; because of this, strongly blue (as opposed to blue-violet) stones are especially costly.

So who do we have to thank for this stunning stone?

Who else: Tiffany’s.

As mentioned, zoisite was already a known element at the time of tanzanite’s discovery, in 1967, and the treatment applied may change its appearance, but it doesn’t change the elemental material involved. Scientifically, the gem was and is known as “blue zoisite.”

But Tiffany’s didn’t think such an awkward name would help sell the stone. Hoping to capitalize on the gem’s rarity (since it could, and can, only be found in northern Tanzania) and its novelty, they renamed it after its country of origin, running a series of ads that emphasized that the stone now existed in only two places worldwide: Tanzania and Tiffany’s.

Don’t worry; these days you don’t need a robin’s-egg blue box to hold your violet-blue stones; tanzanite, though still rare, can be found at jewelers worldwide.

Thomson Safaris

Founded in 1981 and based in Watertown Massachusetts, Thomson Safaris has been handcrafting trips-of-a-lifetime for over 30 years. Tanzania is our only destination, and has truly become our second home. We’re excited to be able to share it with you through stories and features on our blog.